October is my favorite month! I look forward to wearing sweaters and jeans and down vests. I love when the temperatures drop and the leaves on the trees turn color. I especially love when pumpkins start appearing in the stores and pumpkin lattes are available again. And I still love Halloween!

In celebration of my favorite month, here is an October still life, edited two ways in Lightroom.

It’s Sunflower Week! It’s been awhile since I’ve done a still life. I thought my white chair was calling out for some sunflowers- so here we are! I took probably 15 photos and edited them in different ways. I just did a quick Lightroom edit on this one.

Intention has continued to be a hot topic of discussion with my photo group this week. I think shooting flowers with intention is perhaps not what we all had in mind, but, since I was taking photos of gerbera daisies, that was where I practiced. I did not make a list of words as was suggested, but I did have the words nostalgia and vintage in mind when I shot and edited this photo. Looking at it afterward, I realize I should/could have used a vintage container for the flowers- but I was thinking simple too, I guess. As usual, I did stray in my other flower photos (you’ll see another shot tomorrow)- so I’m not sure this is the best method for me.

A cowboy (or western) still life is the latest assignment for our photo class. I have no idea what he expects, so I gathered together some items we have in the house and garage, bought some horseshoes, and took the photo. It will be interesting to see what creative ideas my classmates come up with!

I’m playing it safe this time- just a traditional still life. Although- I know that in my photo group I would get (gently) critiqued for having a square format and mostly for having no space around the edges- and perhaps for the shallowish depth of field! I might even get the kiss of death comment- “It would make a nice greeting card.” But I’m on winter break!

The theme for my AAUW photo group today is Locks and Keys. I selected several past images of padlocks to bring, but then I decided that, since I wanted to play with my Lensbaby Edge 80, I would take a couple photos of keys to bring as well.

After taking a few shots of keys spread out in different configurations, a small branch I have on my shelf of props caught my eye. I ended up hanging keys on twigs, and came up with these two images:

When I was all finished shooting, I combined two other images in camera, which I then converted to a split toned black and white in Lightroom. What looks like an added texture is actually the garage floor!

These beautiful flowers stopped me dead in my tracks as my friend, Carol and I entered the restaurant where we had lunch in San Francisco. We both ended up taking a few photos- the flowers were so gorgeous! We ended up photographing them from different angles- and edited them in ways that were opposite from each other, as well as opposite of our usual styles. Carol’s photo is an impressionistic rendering- and mine is more of a standard photo, edited for clarity. It’s as if we switched styles!

It is feeling so good to get back to doing a little still life photography! Now that the house is no longer torn up, I have some space and time to set up some stills. I’ve been especially eager to try out a birthday present I got from my friend, Debbie- a vintage window! It’s been piled in the garage with everything else, but now I can get to it, along with some of my other still life props that were covered up.

I propped up the window on a table outside in the 95 degree heat and had a great time composing this image. I edited it using Kim Klassen’s darkday preset (desaturation, a matte tone curve, and split toning, among other adjustments).

As usual, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so I took it into Photoshop and Topaz Impression for a painterly look.

Here’s another Topaz Impression version- a new one called Wispy Sketch. Love this!

It was too hot to create any more still life vignettes- but look for this window in the future! Thanks, Debbie!

You may remember my series of chair photos from last year- some including this hat. Well, the bunch of chamomile I picked up at Trader Joe’s put me in the mood again- so here’s another in the series, this time in black and white.